… is not ‘anti-Semitism’, says columnist Linda Heard. Commenting on a UK report that is due to come out on Thursday, Heard writes that “the report is likely to criticize calls to boycott academics working in Israel and blast ‘left-wing activists as well as Muslim extremists for using criticism of Israel as a pretext for spreading hatred against British Jews’.”
Yet, as she points out, among the most vocal critiques of Israel are Jews themselves, and quite a few from Israel:
We won’t know the report’s exact findings until later this week but there’s one thing for sure. Among the leftist activists complained about there won’t be any Israelis, whereas, in fact, Israelis are some of the most vehement critics of Israel.
Unlike Duncan-Smith who apparently admires Israel’s democratic credentials, Israeli journalist Amira Hass, whose mother was a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, says Israel is an apartheid state with privileges reserved mostly for Jews.
“The Palestinians, as a people, are divided into subgroups, something which is reminiscent also South Africa under apartheid rule,” she says. In this case, is Amira Hass guilty of making British Jews the target of anti-Semites too?
What about Ha’aretz reporter and columnist Gideon Levy, an Israeli whose heartfelt articles are headed with such titles as the “IDF’s war on children” and “The crime of looking a bit too Arab”? Does he share responsibility for the desecration of Jewish tombstones abroad?
When Levy blames Israel for demonizing and dehumanizing the Palestinians MacShane, Duncan-Smith and Huhne should listen and ask themselves who is truly at the receiving end of virulent racism.
The Palestinians forced to subsist within open prisons faced with daily humiliation at the hands of foreign soldiers barely out of their teens? Or should we reserve our tears for poor Israeli academics, shunned by their British peers? Boo Hoo! Source
